Leadership. Most of us have an idea of what distinguishes “good” leadership from “bad”—within a team, within an organization. Across our careers, we’ve experienced working with individuals we would call great leaders, and likely an experience or two working with someone who wasn’t effective in leading. And there’s no shortage of theories of “good” leadership or effective leadership models. So why is it so challenging to be an effective modern leader in today’s world of work?
Because leadership is layered and complex. Current shifts in how organizations function, such as adopting hybrid working dynamics or distributing authority outward in organizations, add to the complexity of clearly articulating effective modern leadership practices. Increasing demands for trusting relationships, safety, and well-being at work set new expectations of leadership as well.
A model we use at TiER1 depicts the complexities of leadership across four distinct layers, all of which are interdependent and occur simultaneously. In this article, we will explore what it takes to be an effective leader across these layers through reflection and shared insights from leaders on what they believe “good” leadership looks like at that level. (Throughout the balance of The Modern Leadership Issue of Performance Matters, we investigate in more detail several of the variables at play for effective modern leaders. Get the magazine here.)
Leading self
At its core, leadership starts with leading self. There’s a significant amount of self-awareness, self-monitoring, and self-regulation that goes into effective leadership—as supported by research and literature on emotional intelligence and the critical role it plays in success in life. How we lead ourselves is the foundation of our leadership, no matter our level, making regular assessment and introspection two key practices of modern leaders. (Read this article to learn about one leader’s journey to become a better leader through leading self.)
Self-leadership is the cornerstone of effective leadership in any context. It equips individuals with the skills, mindsets, and behaviors necessary to not only lead themselves successfully but also to influence and lead others toward shared goals and aspirations. (To learn more, check out Leading Teams Through Leading Self.)
As we think about leading self, questions we often explore include:
- How am I showing up to others? What’s working, and what might I need to adjust?
- What am I naturally good at? How am I using that to benefit myself and those around me?
- What is something I would like to get better at? How can I improve in that area?
For more reflection questions to guide your self-leadership learning journey, check out The Importance of Learning to Load Share as a Leader.
From Kelly Woltornist, Head of Global Learning, Takeda: Good leaders realize that they are always learning and growing. They practice regular reflection, ask for feedback, and openly share what they are learning with their teams. As the world of work continues to change, leaders must be prepared to lead in completely unknown and unfamiliar situations. This requires the ability to determine what is needed, but also the need to be humble and realize that they may not always know what to do.
Leading others
As organization structures continue to flatten, and authority continues to be distributed away from a central core, the ability to lead others and influence (versus control) in positive, future-focused ways has become instrumental for modern leadership success. To do so, leaders must share more information than before, more often and in more transparent ways, so individuals at the edges of the organization can make informed decisions. Doing so builds and inspires trust. (For more insights on effective leadership development and practices, check out Leaders Matter: Three Timeless Tenets.)
Effective modern leaders also must foster inclusivity and belonging. Now, perhaps more than at any point in history, leaders see the need to create an environment where every team member feels safe bringing their whole self to their work. Leading in a distributed environment adds an additional layer of complexity to this, as leaders must be intentional and thoughtful about how best to build on the strengths and experiences of those that follow them. (For recommended leadership practices that help build a culture of belonging, check out Building a Culture of Belonging and A Strengths-Based Approach to Building an Equitable Workplace.)
Leading others involves asking questions like:
- What do those who I am leading need from me?
- Where do I need to tune in? (And maybe where can I tune out?)
- What does my team need from me?
- How can I lean on others who have strengths in areas I do not?
- How can I lean on the strengths of those on my team to help us achieve our goal(s)?
From Leigh Fox, President & CEO, altafiber: When you become a leader, it is no longer about you, it’s about everyone else. For so many well-read, intelligent, capable leaders, it’s typically their egos and focus on self that disconnects them with their employees and leads to gaps in leadership. Leaders need to have emotional intelligence and be secure enough in themselves to realize they are lucky enough to simply represent their employees, and that it’s not about them.
From Jen Ingram, Mission Matters: Activating the Power of Authentic Leadership: The best leaders are created; born and forged like a ball of clay in the hands of life, refined by opportunity, experiences, and tested by lessons. Authenticity is an invaluable trait for anyone to possess, but this is especially true for leaders. Authentic leadership is a disruptive frequency, countering the antiquated transactional status quo. When leaders adopt and model authenticity, there’s an openness that’s created and an intrinsic transformation that occurs.
Leading the organization
There is no shortage of writing about this level of leadership. Key skills for leading an organization include building a strategic vision, engaging others in creating a plan to achieve it, cultivating trusting teams, inspiring and motivating to the edge of the organization, maintaining that energy and alignment as the organization moves forward, and sensing along the way while reengaging the organization when course corrections are needed. (To learn about another key skill for leading the organization, check out Love as a Leadership Value.)
Building on the layers of leadership, the most effective modern leaders of organizations embrace their role as a servant leader and steward of the organization, guiding it to healthy, high performance. (For related insights on how to lead a thriving organization, check out Leading a Thriving Organization: Six Questions to Explore.) No matter their function, they understand their impact in building and sustaining healthy cultures through the experiences of their people. (To learn how leaders at Avēsis own their role as culture stewards, check out this case study.)
Leading an organization involves exploring questions like:
- How am I going to help shape the future of this organization?
- How and where can my unique strengths and passions be best used by the organization to accomplish our goals?
- What does the organization need from me right now? What is it going to need from me six, 12, or 18 months from now?
From Brad Sheehan, VP Flight Training & Standards, Delta Air Lines: Teams today are more diverse, not just demographically and culturally but in experience and problem solving, which is profoundly beneficial but can add feelings of complexity and opposition. It’s a very good thing for our ideas to conflict—it helps us better understand and address challenges—but that doesn’t mean that we personally conflict. Having a clear and shared vision with defined values to support a generative culture is necessary. A good leader should see themselves as serving from the bottom of the org chart—not having achieved the top.
From Molly North, CEO, Al. Neyer: The playbook for great leadership, indeed, has been overwritten and requires us to be too many things. In fact, all sorts of people make great leaders. The challenge that we each must answer is how to leverage our strengths and harness the part of our strengths that are our weaknesses in a way that elevates our leadership potential. In the not-so-distant past, leaders led with their natural inclinations. Drivers were autocratic and amiable leaders were relationship focused, as examples. We’ve learned that situational, adaptable leaders are those that can really get the most from people. As work has grown in complexity, maximizing what people can contribute is the differentiator between companies that thrive and those that don’t.
Leading outside the organization
Many leaders also bring their leadership skills into contexts like community, religious, and philanthropic organizations. Thankfully, the skills of modern leadership that enable someone to lead self, others, and the organization are transferable outside the organization to serve a broad set of stakeholders. (To learn more about leading with a stakeholder orientation, check out The Ripple: Conscious Leadership and System Thinking.)
At this leadership layer, the questions leaders explore may include some similar to those from leading the organization, but may also move into broader areas of interconnectivity and impact:
- How might I lead in external organizations that are aligned with my company?
- How could my leadership build synergy for both?
- How am I going to help shape the future of this organization?
- How and where can my unique strengths and passions benefit this organization?
From Milen Mahadevan, CEO, 84.51 (a division of Kroger): Leadership is not a static thing—you have to stay agile and be ready to flex your style to the situation. Leadership is difficult and it should be. It is not meant to be easy. It isn’t something you just do—not a step on the ladder of a career. Leadership should be a passion for others, a commitment to the right things to do for the people of the business, because they are the business…Give yourself grace—you don’t have every answer, you aren’t in control of everything.
A recent reflection from my leadership journey…
For several years, I had been leading across multiple places in and for TiER1—I held a few internal roles, in addition to client leadership roles with two enterprise clients. Midyear, as part of a larger organizational restructuring, I was asked to make a choice that would focus my energy on fewer areas that were more aligned around one key client. My initial reaction was that I was being asked to give up things that brought me great joy and personal satisfaction. And the impacts of the restructuring were being felt by many around me too. As a sidenote, I had also recently been promoted. During the acknowledgement from senior leadership, I was commended for the impact I was having in so many areas. So, my initial reaction to the ask was not, “Sure, let’s go!”, but rather, “Why? Let me keep doing what I’m doing that’s clearly been positive!”
I’m not going to lie—I swirled a bit. My cheese had been moved, and I knew I needed to find new cheese if I was going to find a way through this. (I also know I am a creature of habit and am more resistant to change than an early change adopter.) With self-awareness, I was able to own and share the impact the shift was having on me. I sought perspective (and lots of it) from several trusted advisors in my circle. Maybe at first to commiserate and get some validation for my feelings, but always with the awareness that I needed to find my way through what I was processing. I considered what those who look to me as a leader needed from me. If I showed up with negativity or resistance, I understood the effect that would have on others around me. I took time to reflect on what the organization needed of me, and how that was changing. In the end, I was able to reframe my thinking: What I had done was no longer the role in which I could add the most value. It was what I could do in the future (albeit differently) that would have the biggest impact.
While it took some time, I am on the other side of the transition. I knew I would not be able to effectively lead on any other level if I didn’t spend time focused inwardly to lead myself through the change I was being asked to make. From this view, I now see how leading myself was crucial for finding a path through the situation so I could continue to lead others and the organization.
“Good” leadership might be easy to point to in practice, but saying leadership is easy would be an oversimplification. The levels at which leadership must occur across four distinct contexts makes effective leadership a fine art—the most gifted modern leaders are continuously attending to how they’re leading self, leading others, leading their organizations, and leading outside the organization (both professionally and personally), all at the same time.
